1. Russia’s ambassador in Turkey, Andrey
Karlov, was shot and killed on 20 December by Mevlut Mert Altintas – a 22-year-old, off-duty Turkish policeman. After the attack, the man shouted religious slogans in combination with slogans
like “Don’t forget Aleppo, don’t forget Syria!” expressing his rage about the involvement of Russian imperialism in the slaughter of the Syrian people
in Aleppo.

2. The RCIT stands in the tradition of
Marxism and Trotskyism and thus rejects individual terrorism as a useful instrument to fight against oppression and exploitation. While we do not approve of the assassination of the Russian
ambassador, we share no sympathy with this man. He was part of the imperialist Putin machinery which is responsible for the mass murder of the Chechen as well as the Syrian people. However, we
contend that such attacks don’t really weaken the imperialist system, but rather legitimize it to conduct more repression and persecution. Our approach has been well formulated by Leon Trotsky,
co-leader of the socialist October Revolution in 1917 together with Lenin and founder of the Fourth International, who wrote as early as 1911: "If we oppose terrorist acts, it is only
because individual revenge does not satisfy us. The account we have to settle with the capitalist system is too great to be presented to some functionary called a minister. To learn to see all
the crimes against humanity, all the indignities to which the human body and spirit are subjected, as the twisted outgrowths and expressions of the existing social system, in order to direct all
our energies into a collective struggle against this system – that is the direction in which the burning desire for revenge can find its highest moral satisfaction.“

3. Nonetheless, it is necessary to point out
that such desperate attacks are an unavoidable result of the tremendous barbarity which has and is being perpetrated in Syria by the brutal Assad regime and its backers in Moscow and Teheran.
Thousands upon thousands of Syrians have been slaughtered in East-Aleppo during the past weeks. It is hardly surprising that people all over the world direct their hatred against representatives
of the regime responsible for these autocracies. In fact, we can expect more such attacks. The assassination awakes memories to the act of Herschel Grynszpan, a young Polish-German Jew who shot a
Nazi Foreign Service officer at the German Embassy in Paris on 7 November 1938 in protest against the barbaric oppression of the Jews by Hitler. At that time Trotsky remarked: “We Marxists consider the tactic of individual terror inexpedient in the tasks of the liberating struggle of the proletariat as well as oppressed nationalities. A
single isolated hero cannot replace the masses. But we understand only too clearly the inevitability of such convulsive acts of despair and vengeance. All our emotions, all our sympathies are
with the self-sacrificing avengers even though they have been unable to discover the correct road.”

4. While the Putin regime directly
participated in the bloody massacre in Aleppo, the Erdoğan regime shares a central responsibility for the defeat which the revolutionary masses in Syria suffered in the country’s once largest
city. As a result of its latest rapprochement with Putin, the Turkish regime now supports the liquidation of the Syrian Revolution while keeping the
butcher Assad in power. Russia and Turkey already successfully collaborated in arranging the 13 December surrender agreement between rebel groups in East Aleppo and Assad. On 20 December,
representatives of Turkey, Iran and Russia met in Moscow to advance their counter-revolutionary plans. This demonstrates once again that the Syrian popular resistance must not place any trust in
the Erdoğan regime.

5. The RCIT affirms its support for the
ongoing Syrian Revolution, despite the terrible defeat in Aleppo, along with our hostility towards all Great Powers and lesser, regional powers who all share the desire to liquidate the Syrian
Revolution. However, to persevere and to revitalize the revolution, the workers and peasants must draw the lessons of past defeats:

* No trust in and no collaboration with any Great Power!

* No to sectarianism! For multi-religious and multi-national unity in the struggle against the Assad dictatorship! For full national self-determination
for all national and ethnic minorities!

* No trust in the official rebel leaderships!

* For the formation of popular councils and popular militias!

* Most of all: For the building of a revolutionary party in Syria as part of a new revolutionary International!

Pictures and video clips of the latest solidarity activities with the Syrian Revolution: